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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoChris Russell | DISPATCHAngel Long of the Flames Motor Cycle Club picks up cigarette butts at the I-71 off-ramp to 17th Avenue. At least 600 people collected litter yesterday.

Not far from its clubhouse, the Flames Motor Cycle Club owned the 17th Avenue ramps along
I-71.

It all was going down, every beer bottle, every fast-food-wrapper, every cigarette butt and
even-more-unusual litter, into a growing collection of trash bags.

“I knew I would find some money,” said Tyrone Gibbs, 48, of the North Side, when he came across
a $1 million bill — a gag note, obviously — while combing a debris-streaked fence with his trash
picker.

The motorcycle club’s members and a record 600 more volunteers fanned out across Columbus
yesterday, enduring a cold, miserable rain to kick some butt on litter.

The sixth annual “KickButt Columbus” campaign dispatched 44 teams from Wolfe Park on the Near
East Side for a spring cleaning of assigned highway ramps and other areas.

The teams’ goal: To top the record of 4.8 tons of trash and nearly 170,000 cigarette butts
collected last year and hoist the coveted, and delightfully tacky, Golden Ashtray Award.

Along the 17th Avenue ramp in South Linden, a few passing motorists offered honks of thanks to
the recreational bikers.

“We want our neighborhood to look good,” said club member Rick Hollins, 66, a retired forklift
operator from the East Side.

Club sergeant-at-arms Tyson Barnett, 57, of the South Side, offered a professional appraisal of
the seemingly insurmountable collection of litter and butts deposited by trashy motorists. The
butts are kept segregated from the rest of the trash for counting later.

“It surprises me what people throw out the window,” said Barnett, a Columbus refuse worker, as
he came across a rumpled piece of black cloth. “What is this? Underwear?”

It turned out to be a black skull cap. Into the bag it went, joining a muddy vodka bottle, a
Whopper burger box, a losing lottery ticket and other trash he plucked from along the highway
ramp.

Sherri Palmer, manager of Keep Columbus Beautiful, was pleased as she watched the pre-pick pep
rally at Wolfe Park, where teams picked up their gear and pulled on high-visibility green or orange
T-shirts.

“These people love their city,” she said. “We have a great city, people are very proud it, and
they want to keep it beautiful.”

Crews from Columbus-area landscaping companies hit the ramps in their trucks yesterday afternoon
to pick up the trash bags brimming with the volunteers’ labor.

Figures are expected to be available on Monday on the tons of trash and the number of cigarette
butts — the most-common road-side refuse — that no longer litter Columbus.